Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Moreover, WV is done, and TFATWS is coming out only this Friday, so let us fill in the gap by talking about the latest ‘purely Disney’ film, ‘Raya and the Last Dragon’, instead.
What it is about? Yet another Disney attempt to picture a
utopia, ‘Frozen 2’ style. In ‘Frozen 2’, the focus was on climate, (cough,
Greta Thunberg, cough). Here, in RATLD, we are talking more about society,
about how people – in the imaginary world of Kumandra – put aside their
differences and free their world from the Druun, united as one. “I hope that
one day you will join me, and the world will be as one”, spoke the lyrics from
an old American song from my teenage years, and now Disney tried to execute
something similar in RATLD. My dear team Disney, this is hokum, especially in
the U.S., where practically every member of their society is highly
individualistic, making this sort of cooperation highly unlikely. Therefore, the
entire message of RATLD will not amount to anything, but the entertainment
element of the movie is still there. Right?
Well, there is the entire Southeast Asian bit, which is
especially Disney appropriating the especially colorful cultural bits and
pieces of the various ethnicities for money. Sometimes it is more serious, as
it was in ‘Mulan-2020’, apparently, but in case of RATLD? Disney just used the…
Chinese/Japanese version of the dragon, and claimed that it was not so.
Fandom.com would publish anything these days, it seems – for example, they
published an interview with RATLD’s crew who claimed that Sisu was inspired by
the nagas, in part.
…The nagas, again, are the ancient Hindu version of the
reptiloids – they are reptilian humanoids, shapeshifters, who live alongside
humans and sometimes marry them, (or kill them, other times), but they are no more
dragons than they are humans, and their default setting is more of a
snake-human hybrid, or a reptilian humanoid, aka a reptiloid, so the QAnon and
the rest of them insane idiots aren’t that too far out there, but we digress.
Nagas are not dragons, dragons are not nagas, and Sisu, (and her fellow RATLD’s
dragons), was inspired by Aang from the ‘Avatar: the last airbender’ cartoon
series. Kumandra with its five tribes is reminiscent of the world of Avatar
with its four elemental cultures – the Fire Nation, the Earth Kingdom, the Air
Nomads and the Water Tribes – and also of real-life China, which is dry in the
west, but green in the east and downright tropical in the south; Kumandra had
switched this imagery, becoming dry in the east and green in the west among
other things, but it is still RL China (cough Mulan-2020 cough), voiced by a
largely East Asian cast, which in this day and age is primarily China…and also
Japan, true, but certainly not Southeast Asia. So what?
Point, since to a point, the characters of RATLD are a
typical kids’ movie/TV series/etc. formula – a team of quirky characters, each
one bringing something unique to the table, while in reality being the
traditional fighters, rogues, mages, etc., in an atypical get-up, (i.e., Noi is
a baby, etc.), each one needed to complete the quest and fully upgrade Sisu to
stop the Druun… right?
Wrong. In the end it is not the main cast’s special skills
that are needed to save Kumandra, but trust – Raya and co. ends up trusting
Namaari, (who, until then, was pretty much a typical protagonist by the
standards of Disney films), and so it raises a question: was all of this team
building really necessary? Sisu aside, (as a dragon, she gets a bye, I
suppose), this sort of a twist leaves Noi and co. completely superfluous… and
it actually shows; so far, none of the RATLD fanworks talk about anyone else
other than Raya and Namaari, because, hey, same-sex couple! Cool! Yay!
Fanworks! What next?!
Nothing much – that was the overtly educational part of the
RATLD movie, which is being promptly ignored by everyone, even as Earth’s human
population continues to squabble with each other over the COVID-19 vaccines, for
example; everything else was just mind fluff coupled with cultural
appropriation, done in the drunken magpie style – Kumandra is supposed to be
Southeast Asia, only it isn’t; Sisu, Raya and co. are team Aang, with Namaari
being Zuko; and the Druun are really the Druj, embodiments of falsehood and
lies of the Zoroastrian religion, which used to be the state religion of
Persia, modern Iran, until Islam took over – but that was another story. Ours
is that of RATLD, which tried to be meaningful, but ended up going nowhere,
with a trite – and ignored – message of peace that rather undercut the actual
movie plot, (aka a plot twist that did more harm than good to the plot) was
wrapped in a wrapper with some religious connotations, A:TLA did have a spiritual,
if not a religious, side to it, and RATLD tried to copy it blindly, and so some
things got carried over, unintentionally perhaps, but we begin to rant.
…No, not really – RATLD is a rather monochrome world, as far
as Disney creations go. The Druun are yet another incarnation of ‘the other’, a
faceless, featureless enemy, that just wants to kill and make more zombies,
(cough, TWD, cough), one that cannot be reasoned with, or befriended with, or
be sympathized – this is more of Namaari’s thing, only she ends up not being a
villain at all, but rather one of the team. In A:TLA, this sort of thing worked
only because the true villains of the series ended up being Ozai and Azula,
while Zuko was set-up as a reluctant ally to the other heroes – the team Avatar
– practically from the very beginning. In RATLD we do not have that; Namaari is
much less sympathetic than Zuko ever was, so while her plot twist works, it is
not worth it.
…Yes, I don’t like plot twists ever since the first seasons
of AoS messed this concept up, but that’s not the point; the point is that
RATLD works, but little more; it aspires to be something greater, but it fails:
Kumandra may supposedly be an utopia without the Druun, but people there know
how to use weapons, for one thing, and martial arts, and what else have you, so
things were never so rosy from the start – but this is becoming a rant. I do
not want to rant. So, let me just wrap things up by saying that I did not like
RATLD too much, as far as 2021’s movies go, Bliss was much better, (and yes,
the two movies are different, but still), even if it had partially spoiled the
resolution of WV to me – but that is another story.
For now though, this is it. See you all soon!
